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Sports |
Don’t take away my buai
IT is amazing to see how we have
adopted the Western mentality to solving problems, by removing
citizens’ freedom of rights to do whatever they wish to do.
Banning betelnut, my goodness, what are you guys trying to do?
Are you sure you are from PNG?
Our forefathers and their forefathers lived by this tradition
and now you just want to stop people exercising their inherent
right?
Are those who made the call for this ban ready to buy a
lifetime’s supply of toothpaste and toothbrush for all chewers
in the country?
Or is this call some multinational corporations’ hidden agenda
being brought to light?
We are a country blessed with freedom and let that freedom be
our identity.
Look at a country like Australia; there are so many laws and
restrictions that you feel like a 12-year-old living under your
parent’s roof.
It is so sad to see the people’s right to exercise their freedom
of choice or should I say more precisely “people’s right to God
given choices in living life” be taken away from them.
Life is all about choices. If someone chooses to chew buai, let
him/her be.
What the country, as a motherly figure, and the Government, as a
fatherly figure, can do is to
educate these people on the consequences of what their actions
would bring.
All Papua New Guineans know that the concoction of betelnut,
mustard and lime can lead to oral health problems. It is common
knowledge. But yet people choose to chew.
Why?
If lawmakers have not figured it out, then they should not make
a call that lacks understanding of the problem.
Of course it costs the Government money every time someone has
oral health issues, but isn’t that what the Government is there
for, to put taxpayers’ money into looking after us so that we
enjoy life.
While you are at it, why not call a ban to selling of
cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, lamb flaps, high cholesterol food,
sales of cars for producing greenhouse gases, generators, and
even shut down PNG Power stations, as they are all either bad
for our health or the natural environment?
Go the whole mile.
Please tell me how the ban on selling betelnut would help
maintain oral health in villages where the average household
income is less than K3 a day.
Would you teach people how to make toothpaste and toothbrush so
that they can maintain oral hygiene?
What happens to the thousands or rather a million or so people
who make a living from selling betelnut?
What is the alternative for these people?
Come on educated Papua New Guineans, how can you be so
shortsighted?
For many years now, City Hall had passed several laws to contain
or control the trade in betelnut on the streets of Port Moresby
but where have these laws and by-laws taken us?
Nothing has changed.
We cannot make people change, but educate them so they make the
changes themselves.
Betelnut4life
Perth, WA
 
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